PSI
AND PSYCHIATRY - THE NEED FOR RESTRUCTURING BASIC CONCEPTS

Parapsychology research 1972. Psi, Science and Society

Montague Ullman (Maimonides Medical Center)

Parapsychological data cannot be absorbed into the mainstream of science
through any additive strategy. We seem to be dealing with a situation where we
are called upon to go beyond an examination of the data in their continuity
with related fields of investigation and make the more strenuous effort of
resolving their apparent discontinuity. To do this will in all likelihood
involve a "paradigm shift". of the kind described by Kuhn. We are
faced then with two tasks. The task of examining the continuities is addressed
to the question of how our available knowledge helps us understand
parapsychological data. The task of examining the discontinuities is addressed
to the question of how our parapsychological data can help us develop a more
profound understanding of what we now regard as our store of available
knowledge.

An illustrative example of the problem occurs in the field of
psychiatry. For some time now it has been known that psi data impinge in some way
upon psychopathological processes and are apt to be encountered in the course
of the psychotherapeutic endeavor. Freud in a tentative way and Jung in a more
all-out sense were the forerunners of a handful of analysts who sought to
identify the areas of congruence -- i.e., the continuities between psi events
and the psychodynamics of the therapeutic situation. This led to an
appreciation of the role of anxiety, need, interest, and more specifically
transferential and countertransferential factors in eliciting psi responses.

We can add to our understanding of the continuities experimentally by
examining the nature of central processing once paranormal information impinges
upon the central nervous system. Sinclair, and later Warcorner, made important
and similar observations on the kinds of changes that occur in the course of
the paranormal transmission of images. The fragmentation of the ESP stimulus describcd
by both authors has also been noted in some of our pilot dream studies of
telepathic transmission. The possible relationship of these effects to the
studies of Evans on the fragmentation of the stabilized retinal image suggests
possible similarities and continuities between ESP and visual perceptual processes.

More is obviously needed than the establishment of psychological
continuities at the level of meaning and motivation, and structural
continuities at the level of central nervous system processing. We are still
left with the tantalizingly difficult task of corning to terms with the discontinuities.
These discontinuities surface as events transcending spatial and temporal
limitations. Considering this challenge just within the field of psychiatry
itself, it seems to me more and more apparent that any accommodation of
paranormal data will involve the elaboration of a radically different
conceptual base for our understandig of psychopathological syndromes.

If we limit our discussion to just two such syndromes, namely the
schizophrenic and manic-depressive psychoses, we may have to reconceptualize
our understanding of both of these psychoses in terms of the spatial and
temporal aspects of character organization. There has been some tendency in
recent years to merge the two psychoses, but I think that symptomatically, temperamentally,
and perhaps constitutionally they remain distinctive. The manic-depressive
maintains affective ties to the world, but cannot modulate them. The
schizophrenic deploys his affective capacities in the service of maintaining
distance between himself and the world. The schizophrenic is future-oriented
in terms of his unrelenting vulnerability to unpredictable threats to and
assaults upon his isolation. The manic-depressive is past-oriented in
the depressive phase, relating in terms of past failures, and present-oriented
in the manic phase, relating in terms of a sense of unreal successes.

Time plays a different role for each in still another way. Magical
thinking and omnipotence of thought play a key role for the schizophrenic. Normal
processes, extending in time, have to be bypassed to arrive at magical solutions.
Real time, in a sense, doesn't exist for the schizophrenic. This is in contrast
to the manic-depressive for whom tine is either retarded or accelerated,
depending on the phasic variation he is experiencing. In the depressive phase,
there is a severe limitation in the contextual field and time is retarded. In
the manic phase, there is a tremendous expanse in the contextual field and time
is accelerated. In the depressive phase the past overshadows the present and
the future, and in the manic phase the present overshadows both the past and
the future. Is this difference in orientation reflected in differences in ESP
performance? Would precognition be more apt to be associated with schizophrenia,
telepathy or clairvoyance with the manic psychosis, and retrocognition with the
depressive psychosis? Would other but equally consistent relationships obtain
where compensatory abilities might play a role -- i.e., the schizophrenic
sensing things paranormally in the present in connection with his excessive
vigilance concerning the future?

Space can be thought of as content, as context, and in a certain sense as
encompassing the qualities of palpa­bility, endurance, and sameness in contrast
to the qualities of impalpability, elusiveness, and change associated with the
concept of time. In this sense the schizophrenic is time-oriented -- the
changing aspects of reality are more important to him than the enduring ones,
since it is change and not sameness or familiarity that evokes vigilance
operations. For the manic-depressive it is space, context, and sameness, that
dominate over time and change, since the manic-depressive does invest
himself in his human context but unfortunately as an expression of the fantasy
either that it cannot change or that it is changing too fast for him to keep up
with.

This differential weighting of space and time in the two syndromes might
provide potential clues for further research efforts. Might it not be better to
seek effects inthe psychological realm with schizoid individuals and
psychokinetic
effects with those closer to the manic-depressive end of the spectrum (and here
I would include hysterics)?In the first case we are testing the limits of the
schizophrenic's
omnipotence of thought, his need to know in the service of vigilance operations,
and his preoccupation withthe temporal or changing aspects of reality. In the second case we are
testing the limits of the the individual whose interaction with the world is much
more invested in space, context, bodily and motoric involvement.

I have not yet engaged in any systematic study, but I have developed the
clinical impression that from a psychopathological point of view good ESP performers
as encountered in clinical situation are on the schizoid side. I haven't had
the opportunity to study sufficient PK performers, but I would offer the
speculation that they fall within the manic-depressive or hysteric
syndromes.